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1) Welcome to the worst week of the college sports year. Have you ever gone to cook something for dinner and realized you forgot to turn the oven on? So now you've got everything ready to go but your food is supposed to cook at 425 and you haven't turned the oven on so now you can't actually start making dinner for another 15 minutes because the stupid oven has to preheat. This week is the preheat cycle of the college sports year.
Missouri's players will check back in this weekend. We'll have a media day with Eli Drinkwitz, assistants and players on Sunday. Shortly after that (maybe the next day, maybe Tuesday) fall camp will begin. The first game is only 38 days away. Between August 29 and the first week of April, we'll have major college football or basketball every week (and nearly every day) of the year. From the end of the Final Four until SEC Media Days, you know you're going three months without football or basketball (for those who are baseball and softball fans, yes, I know those sports are still going during that time, but it's not quite the same). Like you're prepared going in. You understand you won't have your meal for three months. But last week, we got SEC Media Days and everybody started talking football and it seemed so close. And then you realized at the end of it that we hadn't preheated the oven yet. So it's warming up. We're getting there. But all we can do for the next six days is sit around and wait.
2) Speaking of SEC Media Days, Missouri's appearance was quite boring. I don't mean that as an insult. In general, it's probably actually a good thing. But Eli Drinkwitz has developed a reputation. He says wild things and he pokes some people and he generally makes headlines. He gets behind a microphone and he can't help himself. But last week, he said nothing controversial and, honestly, nothing really of note. That's probably a welcome thing for some Mizzou fans. I like brash and cocky Drinkwitz. He's fun to cover. He's genuinely funny. But I understand why he's toned it down. He's made national headlines a few times in his tenure here, sometimes deserved, sometimes not. Now he's letting his team do the talking.
I came up with a theory on our podcast last week. I'm not sure it's accurate. It might be giving Drinkwitz a little too much credit for foresight. But I wondered if the first two or three years here he was talking a lot to put the focus on himself. His teams weren't great. He likely knew that. The more the coach made the headlines, the less the focus was on a team that was mediocre on the field. Then they went out and won 11 games and they bring a lot back and they're going to start this season probably inside the top 15 and he's perfectly happy with people just talking about the product on the field. He doesn't have to serve as a distraction. He doesn't have to say wild things that will take the focus off his quarterback or his defense or multiple 20-point losses. Again, maybe not. Maybe sometimes he just starts talking and can't stop before he's said something inflammatory. But maybe there was a method to the madness.
Either way, I hope we haven't turned him into a coach speak robot. That's less fun for everybody.
3) The league's "media" made its predictions last week. I put that word in quotes for a reason. It's not because Missouri was picked sixth. I don't actually have much of an issue with that. But of all the preseason polls, the one that matters the least is the one they do at SEC Media Days.
It is...not difficult...to get credentialed for SEC Media Days. It's not on the level of Super Bowl media night, but it's not great. You hear the word "we" a lot more than you should. There are a bunch of people with press passes there that aren't going to be mistaken for Edward R. Murrow. And everyone--not just the homers, but all of us--tend to vote for what we know. If you follow Missouri closely you know about Armand Membou and Daylan Carnell and Brett Norfleet. If you don't, you probably mostly know Luther Burden and Brady Cook. I know that likely makes fans angry, but honestly, I couldn't name many offensive or defensive linemen on other teams either...especially now that the transfer portal puts rosters into a blender every offseason. When I used to vote for the preseason team at media days by the time I got to the fifth or sixth lineman I was supposed to vote for I just started picking cool names from the list of nominees because I hadn't heard of most of them and even if I had I didn't really know how good they were. In other words, there's no reason to stress too much that Burden was the only Missouri player on any of the league's first three preseason all-conference teams. I think there will be more representation on the postseason lists. And if there isn't, that means the media's prediction of the Tigers finishing sixth was actually far too optimistic.
4) Let's dive into that prediction a little bit. Going in, I think everyone knew Georgia and Texas were going to be the top two teams. They should be. They finished in the nation's top five last year (and if we're being honest, Georgia was better than Alabama and we all knew it, but UGA lost a game on the wrong day), they bring back their head coaches and their quarterback and they recruit with the best in the country year in and year out.
After those two, there were five teams that I think you could kind of throw in a hat in terms of preseason expectations. Most believe Alabama, Mizzou, LSU, Ole Miss and Tennessee enter this season with realistic playoff hopes. They're not all going to make it obviously. But that gives the league seven teams that are expected to be in that conversation in November. For Georgia and Texas, this year will be a failure if they aren't in the playoff. For the next five teams, they'll be disappointed if they won't make it, but there are enough question marks that you probably can't deem it a failure if they fall a game or two short. Those five teams could have been picked in pretty much any order. When I did my preseason picks last Monday, I went LSU/Mizzou/Ole Miss/Alabama/Tennessee. The poll last week went Alabama/Ole Miss/LSU/Mizzou/Tennessee. Tomato/tomahto. The order of those five is likely going to be determined by a handful of snaps and some tiebreakers.
After that Texas A&M and Oklahoma were picked eighth and ninth. Most look at those two teams as perhaps having playoff dreams if everything goes perfectly, but probably a tier below the other group of five. The next tier is Auburn/Kentucky/Florida. They might be decent to good teams, but they have the misfortune of being in the best league in the country. One of them is probably finishing 12th. Somebody has to. The final tier is South Carolina/Arkansas/Mississippi State/Vanderbilt. Pretty much everybody views these teams as the league's weakest four. Maybe they won't end up that way, but going in, that's the thought.
So there are five tiers in the league. Missouri is viewed as a tier 2 team. Where the Tigers finish in that tier (assuming the preseason predictions are close) will determine if they're in the playoff or not. I don't think sixth is an unfair prediction. Mizzou could finish 6th in the league and be one of the top 12-15 teams in the country (especially when you get into tiebreakers).
